Due to harmful legislation,
The new Forestry Law could bring more corruption, deforestation and poverty to Honduras

The National Congress will be turning its back on the already depressed forestry sector of Honduras if it approves new forestry legislation containing aspects harmful to those who traditionally live in and care for the forests.

Civil society organizations and forestry experts are sounding an alert about the deficiencies of the proposed Forestry Law of Protected Areas and Wildlife, which has already passed the first Congressional debate.

The National Congress is aware that this proposal has undergone an unusually extensive process of consensus building before being introduced to the full Congress for discussion and approval.

Social forestry groups agree since they participated in long and tedious rounds of negotiation with the hope that their opinions would be considered and included in the final document.

However, they are the same people who today feel frustrated because the congressional representatives ignored their recommendations and ultimately wrote a proposal that favors the richest and hurts the poorest Hondurans.

"Everything has been a joke," agree the members who participated in the negotiations. They are now working feverishly with the political parties and congressional representatives to stop the approval of this proposed legislation.

"It has all been a clever game," say those who believed in the good faith of the congressional representatives. The politicians played subtly, offering for example to include provisions referring to indigenous land rights but ignoring their interests in subjects like the organization of forest management, the management of funds and the participation of civil society in the process.

"The law as it is proposed now would set the country back. The proposal brings with it an institutional regression," warns Armando Matute, a lawyer and legal adviser to peasant groups in Honduras.

Matute and the peasant leaders are urgently asking that the congressional discussion be suspended and that they return to the dialogue process in which, he said, "Human beings should be the focus of the negotiations."

Openings for deforestation and corruption

The process of analyzing the proposed legislation has elicited observations and questions from each of the interested sectors and they are demanding that the discussion be halted until the demands of civil society are attended to.

Celinda Villeda, president of ProForest, warns that the proposal in discussion contains legal loopholes that could permit unsustainable extraction of forest resources, deepening the deforestation problems that already exist in this country.

At the same time she warns that economic interests prevail in the proposal at the cost of social interests and it is setting up the commission to take part in illicit behavior in signing the forestry management contracts.

Like Matute, Villeda urgently believes that the legislation should be halted until the weaknesses are mended.

In the midst of this process, the Honduran Agro-forestry Alliance has proposed a series of meetings with leaders of the parties represented in Congress to explain the weakness detected in the proposal.

"Our suggestions have been heard," mentions Pablo Hernández, HAA president, "But we have received no response, much less any offers, in the meetings we have had with Congressional party leaders."

However, he noted that they have arranged a working meeting for the 25th of February with leaders of the five parties represented in Congress. "We hope they will tell us that they will rewrite the legislation," he said.

HAA members are afraid that the administrative structure proposed in the law would deepen the politicization of the forests and that the creation of an overarching institution to administer the management and preservation of the forests would be converted into a mechanism of corruption.

The fear is that the Honduran Forestry Financial Agency would have too much money and little to do other than create new sources of political favors and campaign financing, explained HAA members.

They are also complaining about the high fees proposed for professionals in forestry science to oversee the forest management plans that are approved.

"We are demanding a law with a concern and vision for the country. That is all we ask," said Rigoberto Sandoval Corea, the former director of the Honduran Corporation for Forestry Development.

The hope of all the sectors is that the congressional representatives will take time to reflect and consider decisions that will benefit the poorest people of Honduras in the future. Whoever lives in the forest loves the forest and wants to preserve it.

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